This Industry Thrives on Secrecy

Here is another example of how keeping communication lines open is helping the FIGHT against INSTITUTIONAL CHILD ABUSE!

This industry thrives by limiting communication. However, with internet use becoming more and more common, the communication lines are being opened back up, and the word is getting out across the nation. They are used to changing their names and/or the locations of their businesses and getting away with it, but it just isn't as easy to hide anymore! Thank GOD!

Today the Great Falls Tribune posted the following headline: Report on Swan Valley Boot Camp Prompts Former Director to Resign New Job.

This story is about Chris Perkins, former director of the Swan Valley Boot Camp in Montana, and against whom there were substantiated abuse allegations against. He then went to work at the Maryland State Juvenile facilities until yesterday's news report came out about him. Read more about it here.

One more thing these articles demonstrate is just how the private program mentality infiltrates the government sponsored programs (and visa versa). The cross hiring between private and public facilities is why the same unproven and harmful methods are used in both types of programs.

Loopholes, Loopholes, Loopholes

The couple (Rand and Colleen Southard) who used to run Star Ranch in Texas is still in business even after their license was revoked to operate Star Ranch where two children died. (Lenny Ortega and Mikie Garcia). The couple is and has been operating Charis Hills Summer Camp since 1999. Read the more about this particular case here.

Chad Youth Enhancement Center in Tennessee continues operating, offering services to children from other states even though the state of Tennessee will not send its own kids there due to suspicions of abuse. Read more here.

Chris Perkins, former director of Swan Valley Youth Academy located in Montana until it was shut down amid abuse allegations, is now director of Maryland State Juvenile facilities. Read more here.

Aspen Education Group Isn't Flying Under the Radar

With endorsements from Dr. Phil and and rapid expansion all while the negative attention has been focused on the WWASPS group of Programs, Aspen Education Group was trying to give itself the reputation of the "kinder, gentler group of teen "help" programs." Well, even Aspen Education Group with all of it's marketing efforts isn't going unnoticed.

10/27/2007 - Emily Graeber, a 15 year old Missouri girl, goes 'missing' on the way back to Aspen Education Group-owned program Island View RTC. (and she is still missing as of today 11/09/2007)

06/28/2007 - Brendan James Blum, a 14 year old California boy, died of a bowel obstruction after complaining of pain, losing bowel control and vomiting but only being given over-the-counter medicine and being told to go to bed. He was enrolled in Aspen Education Group-owned Youth Care RTC in Draper Utah.

04/2007 - Unidentified 16 year old attempted to hang himself from a a tree at the ranch with a shoelace. After some time the staff found him unconscious and revived him, but he died in the helicopter transporting him to the hospital. This took place as Aspen Education Group-owned Aspen Achievement Academy in Loa, Utah.

07/02/2004 - Unidentified 16 year old from Pennsylvania hung himself in a bathroom. After some time, staff found him and tried to revive him, but were unsuccessful. The program was Island View Academy in Syracuse, Utah. -- The same program Emily has disappeared from.

Emily Graeber, 15, Escapee/Survivor or Victim of Foul Play?

The Deseret Morning News's Rebecca Palmer has reported that Emily Graeber, 15, disappeared as she was was headed to the Island View Residential Treatment Center in Syracuse, Utah. She had been on a home visit from the program but was supposed to be returning. "Island View is part of the Aspen Education Group, which owns and operates facilities throughout Utah and in other Western states. Graeber's disappearance is the latest in a series of problems for the company," per Rebecca Palmer. As I have said before, Aspen Education Group, the one that Dr. Phil endorses, is just as bad as the rest of the programs. I hope the girl has just escaped and has not been kidnapped. Although if she has escaped I feel very badly for her. Once you've been in the program and you know program people aren't always what they claim to be you want to run and since the program people enlist the police's help and your parents think they are doing what is best for you, you (or in this case Emily) feel like you are running from everyone just to survive. You have to run from good guys and bad guys alike. Good Luck Emily, I hope you are safe!

F.I.C.A. - Alert! 10/26/2007

**ALERT** 10/26/2007--The new concern among regular public and private educational institutions is the current trend of the outbreak of the antibiotic-resistant MRSA virus. If this is occurring in regular schools where children are not only allowed to but encouraged to wash their hands frequently, to keep open wounds covered and avoid skin-to-skin contact... imagine what will happen in the residential programs which generally consider hand washing and wound covering a privilege that should be earned. I fear a sharp rise in the number of deaths in these programs (due to MRSA among all the usual causes) is just around the corner. **BUYER BEWARE**

http://ficanetwork.net

And the Killing Continues....

Four recent Utah deaths in treatment programs

---

Facility put on probation, but free to take new clients

By Kirsten Stewart

The Salt Lake Tribune (http://sltrib.com)

Salt Lake TribuneArticle Last Updated:10/13/2007 12:55:43 AM MDT

A residential youth treatment center was cited on Friday for providing inadequate medical care to Brendan James Blum, a 14-year-old California boy who died at its Draper facility.
Utah licensers placed Youth Care of Utah on probation, requiring the center to, among other requirements, retool employee training. Youth Care was not fined and it is free to accept new clients, though no more than five every 30 days.
The disciplinary action was reached as part of a settlement between the facility and lawyers for the state Human Services Office of Licensing, which regulates Utah's teen-help industry.
Licensing director Ken Stettler said he hopes Friday's action shows the state takes its watchdog role seriously. It comes a day after criminal neglect charges were filed against two former Youth Care counselors in connection with Brendan's June 28 death.
It also coincides with a congressional probe into wilderness camps, which detailed thousands of cases of abuse nationwide since 1990. Of 10 deaths detailed in the federal report, five occurred in Utah.
The cases showed a pattern of lax government oversight and medical neglect, with counselors assuming the teens were making up their symptoms.
Brendan Blum's mother, Dana Blum, fears the same issues may have played a role in her son's death.
Blum said she "feels" for the employees at Youth Care, but said the facility should have been shut down, at least temporarily, and the owners held accountable.
"Nothing will bring Brendan back," said Blum. "But the bottom line is that when a parent makes a difficult decision to place their child in a treatment program, the management and caretakers have a responsibility to ensure their safety. There shouldn't be any tolerance for the death of a child."


Sent to bed

Blum said the coroner described her son's death as "violent and painful." An autopsy concluded that he died after his bowel twisted, cutting off the blood supply to his small intestine.
Brendan had vomited and been suffering diarrhea all night, according to police. Instead of phoning the on-call nurse, per Youth Care's policy, counselors treated the boy with an over-the-counter medicine and sent him to bed, said Draper police Sgt. Gerry Allred.
The next morning, Brendan, who had Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, was found dead on his mattress.
The on-call nurse, who was later interviewed by police, said had she been consulted, she would have advised sending Brendan to the hospital, said Allred. The Utah State Medical Examiner said with medical intervention, the boy might have survived.


'Flu-like' symptoms

Youth Care officials maintain Brendan complained only of "flu-like" symptoms.
"We extend our deepest sympathies to the family, and we continue to work closely with Utah officials and law enforcement. But we are confident a criminal prosecution will be found unwarranted," said Kristen Hayes, spokeswoman for Aspen Education Group, which owns Youth Care.
Based in Cerritos, Calif., Aspen is a division of the CRC Health Group, which runs boarding schools, outdoor education programs and weight-loss camps.
For two decades, Youth Care has "delivered the highest standards of care," treating more than 1,300 children with behavioral and addiction problems last year, said Hayes. "All of Aspen's programs either meet or exceed state and national standards."


Aspen's record

Stettler confirmed Aspen's reputation, saying, "They've had a pretty spotless record."
Three of four recent deaths at Utah treatment programs, however, happened at Aspen facilities: Blum's and two suicides; one in July 2004 at Island View Academy in Syracuse, and another in April at Aspen Achievement Academy of Loa.
Stettler said the April suicide remains under investigation by law enforcement, but his own probe found Aspen wasn't at fault. The suicide at Island View happened before Aspen purchased the facility.
Blum said she thoroughly researched Youth Care and Aspen and was never told of the fatalities.
"If nothing else, I would like to see them create a searchable database so parents can review deaths and complaints and not have to rely on the subjective descriptions of licensors," said Blum.
The Web site of state licensors has contact information for facilities and shows whether their license is in good standing. But for more detailed information, parents need to phone regulators, who keep only paper files.


Sense of justice

Blum has "taken heat" for enrolling Brendan at Youth Care, but she says research shows behavioral modification programs can work for children with Asperger's.
"The real problem is there are not adequate community resources for kids with mental health problems," said Blum.
Brendan was "erratic and unpredictable," and started acting aggressively at age 3, said Blum. "There were no consequences that were meaningful to him. You could take away privileges with friends, TV, or PlayStation. It didn't matter."
Trips to her county mental health facility, school counselors and private therapists yielded no firm diagnosis.
It wasn't until Brendan turned 13 and got swept up in the juvenile justice system that doctors at a local university diagnosed him with Asperger's.
"They said he was a textbook case of high-functioning autism and should have been diagnosed at age 8," said Blum.
Brendan had a "fine-tuned sense of justice. As his mother, I feel I need to make sure Youth Care is held accountable," said Blum.
"These kids come from families that care about them. They're not just throwaway kids."
kstewart@sltrib.com

July 2, 2004

* Unnamed 16-year-old from Pennsylvania
* Island View Academy in Syracuse
* The teen hanged himself in a bathroom after excusing himself from a movie. Staff believed he was in his room, but the youth entered the bathroom from a private entrance in his room. When staff found him, they unsuccessfully tried to revive him. The facility was cited for minor issues and required to submit a plan of "corrective action."

July 16, 2006

* Elisa Santry, 16
* Colorado-based program Outward Bound
* The teen died on the 16th day of a 22-day backpacking and rafting expedition in a rugged Utah desert near Canyonlands National Park. She had been missing for five hours in 110-degree heat.

April 2007

* Unidentified 16-year-old
* Aspen Achievement Academy in Loa
* The teen attempted to hang himself with a shoelace from a tree at the ranch. He had asked to use the latrine, and when he didn't respond to prompts from staff, they went looking for him, found him unconscious and revived him. He died in a helicopter transport en route to the hospital. The case is still under investigation.

June 28, 2007

* Brendan James Blum, 14
* Youth Care of Utah in Draper
* Blum died of a bowel obstruction. That night, he lost bowel control, vomited and complained of stomach pain. He was given over-the-counter medicine. In violation of the center's policy, staff did not call the on-call nurse or seek emergency medical attention. Two counselors were fired and charged with child neglect. Utah regulators placed Youth Care of Utah on probation. It remains free to enroll new clients.

Martin Lee Anderson's Case Goes to Trial

Boot Camp Death Trial is being shown live on Court TV News -
Vote on the Court TV web site whether or not you think juvenile boot camps should be dismantled nationwide! http://www.courttv.com/13thjuror/index.html
Unbelievably as of this writing 9:45am 10/03/07 - over half of the people (63%) have voted NO that boot camps should NOT be dismantled. This is an outrage!
Watch live on Court TV - and read more on the same site! http://www.courttv.com/trials/anderson/100207_background_ctv.html

Royal Gorge Academy and Child Abuse

Teenager Testifies in Hinton Trial

Publish Date: 8/28/2007 Page: A6

Teenager testifies in Hinton trial

Vic Vela
The Daily Record

Disturbing testimony was provided Monday by a former Royal Gorge Academy student who described bloody details of the alleged physical abuse he received on the part of the boarding school’s co-director, Randall Hinton.

However, the student’s credibility was questioned by Hinton’s attorney — something that will certainly be a large part of the accused’s defense as more witnesses take the stand — as Hinton’s week-long jury trial commenced.

A 17-year-old California boy testified he and two other former students were in a room alone with Hinton when the abuse took place during an Oct. 3, 2006, incident.

“He twisted my arm behind my back and smashed my face into the ground,” the boy said. “I felt like my arm was going to snap. He made me lay in my blood…”

The boy said he was awoken from his bed early that day and was told by a staff member that he would be spending the day with Hinton. The boy testified he was taken to a room where another male student was seated on a chair and a female student was on the floor. Hinton was in the room, as well.

The boy testified that being seated on the chair was uncomfortable for him and when he asked the defendant if he could lie on the floor, Hinton allowed the do so with his “chin up the whole time and arms at (his) sides.”

It was after the boy engaged Hinton in a conversation that the defendant became physically abusive toward him, the boy said. The boy testified Hinton drove his knee into his back and twisted his arm, bringing the student to tears.

Shortly after the incident, Brian Lemons, also a school co-director, walked into the room and saw the boy on the floor covered in blood. Lemons then “threw a tissue at (the boy’s back) and left the room,” according to the boy’s testimony.

The boy said he was told to take a shower and was given a clean school uniform following the incident.

The children were not able to speak to each other during the “14 hours” they spent together in the room, the boy testified.

When asked by Fremont County District Attorney Thom LeDoux if the boy knew why he was being punished that day, he said, “I don’t know to this day why I was in that room.”

LeDoux also asked the boy to explain why he didn’t immediately notify his parents of the incident when he spoke with them over the phone in the days that followed.

“We were told that if we said something bad about the school … there was a staff member next to us who would hang up the phone,” the boy said.

However, Hinton’s attorney, Michael Gillick, attempted to highlight to jurors what he believes to be the boy’s behavioral problems. Gillick asked the boy in a series of questions if he had anger management issues; the boy answered in the affirmative to most of Gillick’s questions.

Gillick also asked if the boy had ever considered suicide.

“When I was younger, yes,” the boy said.

The boy also said he was prone to nose bleeds because of Colorado’s high altitude. Gillick attempted to use that as a way to establish reasonable doubt in the boy’s testimony.

When Gillick asked why the boy didn’t complain to school officials of the alleged abuse, the boy said, “I wasn’t given time…I wasn’t allowed out of the room.”

Hinton was arrested in January following a Cañon City Police Department investigation that culminated in seven counts of third-degree assault being charged against him. He also faces two counts of false imprisonment.

Randall Hinton's Trial Begins Monday 8/25/07

Publish Date: 8/25/2007 Page: A1

Trial for Royal Gorge Academy official begins Monday

Vic Vela
The Daily Record

A week-long trial is scheduled to being Monday for the Royal Gorge Academy co-founder who faces allegations that he assaulted several teenagers who once attended the private boarding school.

Randall Hinton, 32, is set to defend himself against seven counts of third-degree assault and two counts of false imprisonment. All charges Hinton faces are misdemeanors that carry potential jail time, if convicted.

The trial is the culmination of an investigation that began in January and was carried out by the Cañon City Police Department.

According to police records, Hinton allegedly was abusive toward as many as seven different students. Five of the alleged victims are scheduled to testify next week.

While Hinton’s attorney does not dispute some physical action being taken by Hinton, he contends his client’s conduct was appropriate given the circumstances.

“There’s no question he used restraint on some of the children,” said Cañon City attorney Michael Gillick. “But, some of the allegations are just plain lies.”

Gillick said many of the students who are sent to the school are there because of “manipulation, drugs, sex and lies.”

“None of these kids were there for being angels in heaven,” he said. “The charges are an overreaction on the part of the police department.”

The Fremont County District Attorney’s Office was reached, but declined to comment for this story.

Hinton helped to open the boarding school in the spring of 2006. The school houses boys and girls, ages 13-17, who have been sent to the school for various reasons, including behavioral and academic problems.

Because there are no felony charges involved, the matter will be heard in Fremont County Court. Judge Norman Cooling will preside during the trial.

The trial begins at 8:30 a.m. Monday with selection of a six-person jury. Opening arguments may commence shortly thereafter.

Is the Tough Love Industry - a prototype for the larger U.S.A. Corporatocracy?

http://reason.com/news/show/122156.html

Tough Love and Free Speech

How a 'child advocate' gamed the media

Maia Szalavitz | August 24, 2007

Sue Scheff has some serious chutzpah. Portrayed by ABC News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes as a beleaguered mom running a small business to help parents find treatment for troubled teens, Scheff's been telling reporters about a service called Reputation Defender, which she says allowed her to triumph over a bunch of rage-filled Internet cranks. Scheff says these vengeance-seeking wackos nearly destroyed her, an innocent businesswoman, with a series of libelous comments posted on online discussion boards. They had called her a “fraud” and “con artist,” she says, and claimed that she was referring teens to tough love programs that then abused them.

What none of this media coverage mentions is that a few years back, Scheff was sued for the same types of comments now directed at her—highlighting the abuses of a "tough love" rehab center (in this case, one of Scheff's rivals). At the time, she framed the suit against her as an attempt to squelch her free speech.

The major news organizations also mention an $11 million libel judgment Scheff boasts about winning against one of her critics, a woman named Carey Bock. But none of these accounts actually looked into the details of that judgment. Bock’s home had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina during the course of the legal action. Due to her address change, and the stress and depression brought on by the storm, she wasn't even present at her own trial, nor was she represented by counsel. The judgment was by default.

Bock's current lawyer, Tom McGowan, says he's seeking to have the judgment set aside, because Bock never received notice of the trial date. “They get pretty wacky on these sites, but it’s an outrage what’s going on,” says McGowan. If Bock had actually made it to court, the outcome may well have been quite different.

While all of this may seem like an installment of "News of the Weird," it has serious implications for free speech on the Internet—and highlights how the media often fails to get the whole story.

The saga begins in 2000, when Scheff sent her own daughter to a program affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASP, sometimes called WWASPS). Scheff was initially a booster of WWASP, and even referred other parents to its programs. For a referral, WWASP paid $1000 per child, or offered a month’s free treatment for the referrer's child. WWASP clients spend at least 18 months in treatment, at $3000-$5000 per month.

At some point, Sue Scheff became aware of online bulletin boards where teens who had been in WWASP programs were telling horrific stories of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Users also posted media accounts detailing how nine WWASP-affiliated programs were closed following police investigations, regulatory infractions and/or allegations of child abuse.

Scheff later wrote on her website that she had become uncomfortable with some of the organization's methods. She removed her daughter from the program, and began posting her own allegations against WWASP on online forums, under several different names. She also set up her own consultant business, called Parents Universal Resource Experts (PURE), and began taking referral payments for placing teens, just as WWASP does.

While this sort of practice isn't illegal, it's widely considered unethical. Conflicts of interest arise when consultants get higher referral fees from some programs than they get from others. The temptation arises to place kids in the programs that pay more, even though these may not be the programs best suited to a particular child. Once you're being regularly paid by a program, it’s hard to be objective about its quality. This is why codes of ethics in psychology and psychiatry typically bar such "dual relationships."

Under the Lanham Act, which bans business competitors from making false and inflammatory claims about rivals, WWASP sued Scheff over her critical online posts. Because the court was able to substantiate Scheff’s claims with vivid testimony from victims, WWASP lost.

Soon, however, the online boards buzzed again with yet more reports of abuse at new programs, and this time they included programs where Sue Scheff was referring children. It was around this time that Scheff launched her own lawsuit against Bock. Scheff had helped Bock remove her two sons from a WWASP program, but Bock eventually become outraged by what she considered to be Scheff’s unethical referrals. The $11 million judgment resulted only after Bock didn't show up in court to defend herself.

Meanwhile, child welfare investigators substantiated charges of abuse in 2005 at the Whitmore Academy in Utah, a program to which Scheff made referrals. Regulators shut the program down. Just last month, another complaint was filed against Scheff and another program where she places teens, the Focal Point Academy in Nevada. In that filing, a Florida couple alleges that Scheff failed to disclose that she was being paid by Focal Point, nor did she tell them that the business was licensed only as a foster home, not for residential treatment. The complaint describes these failures to disclose as “fraudulent misrepresentations” and “kickbacks.”

The complaint also details how the couple’s teenage son, R.G., was sexually abused by other boys at the program, who “would hold R.G. down in order to take out their penises, which they would rub on his face, while they threatened and beat him.” He was also allegedly repeatedly threatened with anal rape—and the complaint charges that he was beaten after reporting the bullies to school authorities, who neither reported the sexual abuse to the state as legally required, or made efforts to stop it.

Eventually, Scheff hired Reputation Defender to rehabilitate her image online. Reputation Defender sells itself as a service that removes reputation-damaging posts on the Internet, or at least attempts to make them less prominent on search engines. Scheff and Reputation Defender appear to have contacted the Internet service providers for the site that hosts the most popular discussion boards for victims of tough love programs, a site called fornits.com. According to fornits founder Ginger McNulty, two different service providers recently removed fornits.com from their servers after complaints. Both ISPs refused to divulge the source of the complaints. But the timing is awfully suggestive.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation—a premier defender of free speech on the net—was quoted in Forbes as supportive of Reputation Defender. But its spokesperson, staff attorney Kevin Bankston, said that the group was described to him as using positive articles to defend against negative ones, not suppressing speech. “To the extent that Reputation Defender is using baseless legal threats to get speech critical of its clients taken taken down—that is something we’d have serious problems with,” he said.

Fornits is a mostly unmoderated forum, and, as a result, can sometimes include obscene, angry, and off-color rants and slurs. But it's also one of the best sources parents and journalists have for finding out about abuse in residential teen tough-love programs, often straight from the mouths of abused teens and their parents.

Before the Internet existed, thousands of teens who felt they had been harmed by tough love had few ways of complaining, or finding out if others had endured similar experiences. Without places like fornits, they can't be heard, in part because journalists have few other ways to find them.

“It’s unfortunate that nuts and angry people have chosen to attack Sue Scheff in obscene terms,” says attorney Phil Elberg, who represented fornits when it was sued along with Bock by Scheff (the fornits case was dropped). Elberg's one of the few lawyers to have won multimillion dollar judgments against tough love programs. He adds, “This has allowed the focus to shift away from the tactics that Scheff has used and the fact that she describes herself on the net as a child advocate and a critic of the industry, when in reality, she symbolizes so much of what is wrong with it.”

Also unfortunate is the reporting by ABC News investigative reporter Martin Bashir on the new show, I-Caught, as well as coverage in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. All told only half the story. Both McNulty and McGowan say they tried to contact these reporters to set the record straight, but were ignored.

The whole sordid story reveals the flaws in both unmoderated online media and in what passes these days for journalism. One way Reputation Defender has managed to move positive stories about Scheff up the ranks on Google is by posting “news stories” she has written on citizen journalism sites like NowPublic. But the mainstream media is not supposed to be as easy to game.

They could start correcting the record by reporting on Reputation Defender’s attempts at censorship and obfuscation, instead of cheering on efforts to silence websites that, for all their flaws, have a history of exposing real incidents of child abuse.

Maia Szalavitz is author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead, 2006) and a senior fellow at stats.org. Her latest book, co-written with Dr. Bruce D. Perry is The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook. (Basic Books, 2007).

Teen Ranch Evades Law - Case Shines Light on Child Programs that go Unlicensed in Utah.

What Sets Aspen Apart from the Rest???

Read the latest article here.

"Kinder and Gentler?"

They just don't listen! They always think, THIS one is going to be different. Pathway Family Center is a direct descendant from the STRAIGHT, INC. family tree. They think "layers of oversight" will make a difference. IT DOESN'T. We are supposed to learn about our history so that we do not repeat the same mistakes! Why is it, that this part of history continuously gets ignored and therefore is consistently repeated! "Over the GW is new feature film based on stories from another STRAIGHT INC descendant." Things do not change. I hope the people of Burns Harbor Indiana quickly educate themselves on the potential horrors of these places before it is to late.

"Tough Love" & Romney Financiers

Feature Film : "Over the GW" by Nick Gaglia.
"Until now, there has never been a feature film that takes us inside "tough love" teen programs like those headed by Romney financiers Mel Sembler and Robert Lichfield."
Read the Film Review:
Must-See Indy Film Exposes Cruel Teen Correction Programs
By Maia Szalavitz, HuffingtonPost.com, July 7, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/movies/56241/

Bated Breath During the Summer Months

Each morning I wake up, I thank God I'm alive. Then I walk over to my computer with bated breath as I read the news headlines. I've been reading about the oppressive heat in the west, and I think of the children who have died. I can't help but wonder if another son or daughter has died today. Sometimes we read about it in the news, other times it's quietly covered up. I wonder whose child is dying for water (quite literally) today. Too many children are dying in an industry claiming to 'help' troubled kids. Too many children are dying from simply not having any water. How many more children will it take before the citizens of this country stand up and say ENOUGH!